Among the books of the New Testament, the book of Revelation is a bit of an outlier. The only apocalyptic book in the Christian canon, it lacks both the narrative quality of the Gospels and Acts as well as the instructional one of the Epistles. Missing also are the mystical “God is love” proclamations one might find in the Gospel of John, Paul’s hopeful expectations of glorious things to come and the social gospel kind of pronouncements found in Luke and James. Instead the book of Revelation contains a series of hallucinogenic visions describing massive death and destruction, final judgement and the end of the world as we know it.

To help us gain a greater understanding of this somewhat problematic Christian text Pagels interprets Revelation through the lens of its first century context. Composed in the wake of Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Great Temple, according to Pagels the final book in the New Testament is as much a piece of political propaganda as it is as proclamation of faith. By calling upon the newly conquered to remain true to the faith while also comforting those faithful with the knowledge that their evil Roman oppressors would soon be vanquished by the forces of good, Revelation through its cryptic imagery and strange visions is at its heart, a first century anti-Roman tract.

But, as we all know, the world changes. What do you do with a anti-Roman book when the Empire becomes, well, Christian? According to Pagels once Rome embraced Christianity the early Church Fathers appropriated the book of Revelation as yet another weapon to be used in their fight against heretics and other religious dissenters. Centuries later, ironically things would come full circle as the book would be used by Protestants like Luther to rail against the alleged evils of a Roman Catholic Church.

2 responses to “The Revelation(s) of Elaine Pagels”

I’d like to note a few things. 1) Revelation is not a “prophecy” book, but an apocalyptic book. To read it only as forward looking (or even primarily as forward looking) is a mistake. 2) It is anti-empire, regardless of whether that empire claims to be Christian or not (sidenote: “empire” and “Christian” at least if we talk about followers of Jesus are mutually exclusive). It should be read in the same way today.